shoes&pattens2

32

Shoes and Pattens

tional ‘wrap-around’ method to be abandoned for the making of shoes and it to be replaced by a very standardised two-part system in which the vamp and ąuarters were separate units joined by sym-metrical seams on either side. Among the shoes from ‘Baynards Castle’ there is only one madę in one piece, and that is for a very smali child (Fig. 53). Ankle-shoes and boots, however, continued to be madę in the traditional way. A further inno-vation was the addition of a tongue, similar to that on a modern shoe, to front-laced shoes and ankle-shoes which had a deep opening at the vamp throat. This was usually sewn along just one edge {cf. Fig. 98), and would not only have madę the upper morę waterproof but would have prevented the lace from chafing on the instep. As at all periods, decoration is rare. There is just one example of openwork decoration - the ąuarters of a low-cut shoe (see below, pp. 80-1 and Fig. 115c) - but from ‘Baynards Castle’ there are several magnificently-engraved designs com-posed either of geometrie or of foliate motifs (Figs. 50-51; below, pp. 83-7). It was probably so as to protect shoes like these that wooden overshoes - ‘pattens’ - first came into morę generał use (see below, pp. 91-6).

42, 43, 44 Late 14th-century shoes. Scalę 1:3 approx.    f—

Nearly all shoes had buckie or latchet fastenings (Tables 6-7) and were very similar in styling (Figs. 42-47; 49-51). They were invariably cut Iow at the sides beneath the arch of the foot, and, except for one of the latchet types (the ‘side-latchet’), the ąuarters were normally shaped in an elegant curve below the ankle on the outer side but left horizontal on the inner. For convenience, the strap or latchet was normally sewn to the inner side, and the buckie or latchet-holes set on the outer, where they would be morę accessible. In constructional details also they were virtually identical: they had no topband or heel-reinforce-ment, but a cord was stitched to the inside of the ąuarters around the ankle and to the inside of the vamp as far as the toes in order to protect the leather from stretching and chafing at the weakest points (cf. Figs. 102-104). As Table 9 shows, these styles were worn almost exclusively by older children and adults. And to judge from the complete examples, where the sole survives in-tact for measurement, it seems that buckled shoes were proportionally morę common than front-